Crucible Guard vs Circle 2018-11-29

I had a chance to finally bring my Crucible Guard to the local game store, so the Trollbloods took position on the shelf and the unpainted army of alchemists jumped in the box.

I’ve played a few games with Syvestro, messed around with the Rocketmen as well as some of the other units, and tonight I wanted to try out the Crucible Guard’s medium bases.

My List:

Crucible Guard Army – 75 / 75 points

[Theme] Prima Materia

[Syvestro 1] Aurum Adeptus Syvestro [+28]

Liberator [10]

Suppressor [13]

Vindicator [15]

Hutchuk, Ogrun Bounty Hunter [0(6)]

Prospero [0(5)]

Retaliator [9]

Retaliator [9]

Suppressor [13]

Crucible Guard Assault Troopers (max) [13]

Crucible Guard Storm Troopers (max) [16]

Dragon’s Breath Rocket [5]

I can’t really remember their list – this game flew by superfast. It was Moshar the Desert Walker inCircle’s Tharn theme. There were a couple beasts, a ton of Tharn women and Lord of the Feast.

He wins the roll-off, I pick sides, and he goes first.

Deployment

My line of CG vs a line of Tharn.

I didn’t really know how to play my army, and I wasn’t sure what the Circle army could do. I remembered something about pillars that were things my guys could get slammed into, and could be used to make a wall around flags, and other crazy things.

So the infantry went intermixed. I had played a few games in Dallas where the Gatormen Posse were kind of shuffled into each other, units in the shape of X, and wanted to try something similar here. I figured an ass trooper or storm trooper would get hit, but it would be difficult to take out a whole unit.

My thinking with the lake was that Syvestro could give the jacks a speed boost and they could run across. Prospero would be trusted to hold his own on the right, flooding the rectangle with jacks.

I knew the Circle army would threat far and quick, but I think I underestimated where the line would be drawn.

Turn 1

The little grouping of circle dudes on the upper left cornerof the picture were removed by shots mainly from the Storm Troopers. Imperial Storm Troopers can’t hit anything, but Crucible Guard overcame that issue by giving their troopers bigger guns. It seemed like every AOE drift was falling right where I wanted it.

The initial advance.

So Circle flooded the zone, and Crucible Guard filled the zone with craters. I felt lucky, and was fairly sure I shielded both Prospero and Syvestro from enemy reprisal. Little did I know…

Turn 2

Circle’s second turn would end the game.

Looks bad for Syvestro.

A unit ambushed in, and Moshar popped into the body of a witch. He created two pillars. Lord of the feast charged one, because although it was an obstacle that could be charged like a model, it wasn’t a friendly model. So his own things could charge it. Lord didn’t make melee attack. Instead, he/she made a ranged attack, teleporting to my heavy warjack and killing Syvestro with bought attacks.

Yup. Bad for Syvestro

Okay. An important thing of note here is that Lord wanted to teleport to the second piller (bottom of picture), but couldn’t because the pillar is not a model. The Lord of the Feast can only teleport to a model.

How to avoid in the future:

So the trick is that if I want to keep my warcaster safe from Lord of the Feast, better positioning is key. Keep all models 2” + 31mm away from your warcaster. The flip side is that in doing so, you lose the screening and other units can get in to kill your caster just as easily.

My solution:

Two Vanguards. The first is 3” away, and the second is 3” away from the first. When Lord ravens the heavy or colossal or gets too close, simply chain away the ranged attack. Shield guard to the first, then to the second. So the one hit is the jack 6”(plus base size) away from the original target.